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You don’t have to drive everywhere, alone in your car in Vermont, he says. Especially with a growing number of options, like buses, nice bicycle rides along dedicated paths, and a car share program.

Spencer had a hand in providing Vermonters, especially those around Burlington, with a lot of those options. He was a commissioner for the Chittenden County Transportation Authority, which offers bus and other mass transit services in northwestern Vermont. He was a founding board member of CarShare Vermont.

He also helped establish a bike ferry at the mouth of the Winooski River, and a bicycle recycling program that provided about 2,500 bicycles to low income Vermonters, and a trailside center on the Burlington Bike Path.

For these activities and related accomplishments, Spencer is nominated for the Green Mountain Environmental Leadership Awards in the persistence category. The award honors individuals or groups who work doggedly to achieve environmental goals.

Spencer, 42, of Burlington said the point really is to create lots of easy, plausible and affordable options for people who don’t want to commute alone in a car every day. He said cities that have plenty of options besides cars tend to do better than other communities. “They are better places. They are the cleanest places. These are places that have a booming, creative buzz,” Spencer said.

He is the founder of Local Motion, the bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group, and served as its executive director for a dozen years.

Spencer said he would work on plenty more projects to expand options in Vermont. Among them are creating a downtown Burlington transit center, expand car share programs beyond Burlington and create bike and pedestrian paths that have real connections between towns.

By the way, yes, Spencer owns a car, but his family gets by easily with just one vehicle, he said. Otherwise, he said he bikes, walks or uses CarShare Vermont to get from place to place.

He said anyone interested in driving alone less often can begin to take steps to do so without entire abandoning the one person car commutes. One day a week, they can take a bus, he suggested, and on weekends, try biking or walking to complete some errands.

“To solve congestion in our region, we need five percent of the population to change their behavior,” Spencer said.